This is Not Our Home

We do not work for ourselves; our salaries or our finances are for the Kingdom. We do not retire, because our reason for being here is not over. “Here we have no continuing city”. It is not our home.

What counts is His will for our lives. He has called us to be salt and light in this world.

Since my earliest childhood memories in Ghana, I have been surrounded by people of the majority who are of a different colour or creed. Being British—or is that Irish? Or is that Northern Irish?—and born in Germany, and blessed with an accent different to that of most of my countrymen, as a missionary storyteller, I have always been foreign wherever I have lived. Married to a Dominican we both often have heads turning when we enter the scene.

If you have been following the news you will know that Northern Ireland has been experiencing riots and atrocities as many people have reacted against “foreigners” and immigrants because of an horrendous attack on a national by a immigrant man from Sudan.

Seeing yesterday the roadways into our wee town centre scarred by tyres that were burned on them this week I also heard that my (Turkish) barber friends, working not a quarter mile from our house, had their business burned down this past week.

In a world of uncertainty we need to place our trust in the LORD, remembering that here we have no continuing city, but we do have a command from Jesus to “occupy until I come”, a commission to be messengers of Jesus’ Good News and preach the Gospel to every creature.

His promise to us, when fear or worry would seek to take root? It is this:

“What shall we then say to these things? If God be for us, who can be against us?”~Romans‬ ‭viii 31‬